


Friends in High Places

by obstinate_as_an_allegory



Series: Troublesome Witness [3]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Rescue Missions, ransom demands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3592215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinate_as_an_allegory/pseuds/obstinate_as_an_allegory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bonacieux is taken for ransom on a business trip, the musketeers are tempted to sit this one out. </p><p>The continuing adventures of Constance and Aramis, because apparently their friendship is my favourite thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a dinner party

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to 'The Troublesome Witness' and 'those who come back', but there's probably no need to read them first. And we've gone into the present tense; not sure why.

Constance stands patiently in the doorway, arms laden with bundles, as Jacques takes them from her one at a time to tie onto his horses.

‘Did you pack my shaving kit, Constance?’ he asks sharply. She nods.

 ‘In the saddlebag.’

 ‘And my finer shirt? This meeting is important.’

‘It’s in there.’

 He takes the last bag from her and ties it securely to the back of the saddle. When he has checked it three or four times, he stalks back over to her, hands twitching in agitation.

 ‘This is a most inconvenient time for it, but I must go. This could be the deal that finally sees me recognised for my true potential.’

 She nods again, her expression carefully neutral.

 ‘I will be four days at most. You will be alright?’

 She smiles at him, trying not to look too cheerful. ‘Quite alright.’

 ‘If any of the customers call…’

 She nods meekly and endures his lecture, not for the first time, one foot tapping impatiently beneath her skirts. She has been a model wife in the weeks since her run in with the Spanish spymaster. With the exception of a few hours’ shooting practice in a quiet glade of the Bois de Boulogne, but any misdemeanours of which her husband is unaware hardly count.

 She takes one of his hands gently and squeezes it. ‘If you want to make much progress before nightfall you’ll have to hurry. Don’t worry about me.’

 He twitches, glancing around to the apprentice holding the horses by the reins. Keeping hold of her hand, he bends closer.

 ‘Now, Constance.  You must promise me that you will behave _appropriately_ whilst I am gone.’

 Her smile becomes strained. ‘I promise,’ she says. Appropriate, after all, is a relative term. ‘Safe journey,’ she adds, somewhat belatedly, as he clambers up onto his mount. He waves at her imperiously like the king in a parade, wobbling just slightly in the saddle, and she raises a hand tentatively to wave back. As he disappears around the corner, a shadow detaches itself from the wall and resolves into a uniformed musketeer, shooting a half amused glance over his shoulder at her husband’s disappearing form.

 ‘Did you pack his shaving kit?’ says Aramis incredulously. ‘Good lord, Constance, how will he manage without you?’

 She rolls her eyes at him. ‘How long have you been lurking there? It’s hardly polite.’

 ‘My apologies.’ He sweeps off his hat and makes her a courtly bow. ‘I was early, and did not like to interrupt.’

 She squints up at the sun. He’s very early, but she can’t have him making a spectacle in the street where her neighbours can see, with the dust scarcely settled behind Jacques’ departure. ‘Oh, come on then. Come in.’

 He follows her indoors, grinning.

 ‘What are you doing here already? Even musketeers are sufficiently civilised to know this is not a reasonable dinner hour.’

 ‘The court adjourned earlier than expected. I’m here to make myself useful.’

 She stares at him. ‘In what way, useful?’ she asks doubtfully. Unoffended, he spreads his hands as though his thinking has not advanced quite this far. ‘Where are the others, then?’

 ‘Ah. Athos has inspected our combined supplies of wine and judged that none of it is suitable to bring to your table. He’s gone to the wine merchant in the Place des Vosges to procure something more acceptable.’

 She raises her eyebrows. ‘Ah… has he?’ she asks weakly.

 ‘The merchant in question is a notorious swindler, but he has a good cellar, and so Porthos has gone with him to ensure that the wine merchant survives the encounter intact.’

 She stifles a laugh. ‘Very wise.’

 ‘Indeed,’ he says solemnly.

 ‘And d’Artagnan?’

 ‘I believe d’Artagnan is currently ransacking my rooms for a suitable shirt, since his last clean one met with a misadventure at court today.’

 He’s still smiling so she knows not to worry, but there’s still a slight edge to her voice when she says, ‘misadventure?’

 ‘Some provincial Vicomte upended a glass of the king’s finest port on one of the king’s finest musketeers. Most embarrassing.’

 ‘I’ve seen worse than a wine-stained shirt,’ she says mildly, thinking that they are all making rather a performance of this.

 ‘We don’t receive a lot of dinner invitations. We’re anxious to demonstrate that our mothers managed to instil some manners in us.’

 She snorts aloud, and he lays a hand to his heart as though mortally offended.

 ‘I don’t throw a lot of dinner parties,’ she admits. ‘I’m not sure I am familiar with all these intricacies of etiquette.’

 He grins widely and looks down to unbuckle his sword. ‘We are in no position to judge,’ he points out. ‘Well, maybe Athos. But he has renounced courtly manners, except on special occasions.’ He props the sword against a wall and lays his hat down on the table, and finally turns to look at her expectantly. ‘I am at your disposal, Constance. Put me to work.’

 She blinks at him for a moment or two and then sighs in exasperation. She suspects that taking on a musketeer as a scullery maid may be more trouble than it is worth. But, since he won’t be deterred, she equips him with a kitchen knife and a basket of vegetables and leaves him to it while she clatters with pots and pans, fusses with seasoning, and worries about serving the fine wine Athos is allegedly buying in the clunky old glasses that are the only ones she has. 

 A knock at the door disturbs their industry after only a few minutes. She opens it expecting one of the others, and is somewhat surprised to see Madame Fournier, the wife of the glovemaker who owns the house next door.

 ‘Madame Bonacieux,’ she says, smiling thinly, ‘oh – I’m so sorry, are you _entertaining_?’

 She is staring straight past her at Aramis, chopping vegetables in his shirtsleeves in Constance’s kitchen, and her mouth is tight with vindictive pleasure.

 ‘Not at all,’ Constance says, trying half-heartedly to block her view. ‘Was there something I could help you with?’

 She hesitates a moment too long and Constance knows immediately that she saw Aramis arrive and is therefore here only to muster gossip to share with the other local women. Constance is younger and marginally better dressed than most of her neighbours, and she knows they would like to tell tales on her.

 ‘I was hoping to borrow your dressmaking scissors,’ says Madame Fournier carelessly.

‘Aaah, how unfortunate,’ says a voice behind Constance, and she jolts in surprise. ‘My dear sister here lent them to my wife only yesterday and she has not yet returned them. I apologise profusely for the inconvenience.’

 Aramis has appeared beside her in the doorway and laid a fraternal hand on her arm, and Constance is struck dumb. She had not thought him capable of a _fraternal_ gesture.

 ‘Your sister…?’ says Madame Fournier uncertainly.

 ‘Your _wife_ ,’ Constance croaks, risking a glance at him. He’s beaming shamelessly at Madame Fournier.

 ‘We’ve not been introduced,’ he says smoothly, and Constance recovers the use of her tongue just in time to confirm that this is, apparently, her brother Antoine, visiting Constance while her husband is away, since after all it would not be proper to leave a married woman so long alone. Madame Fournier leaves charmed and not a little confused, and Constance leans against the door to slowly get her breathing back to normal.

 ‘You don’t look remotely like my brother,’ she tells him. Aramis has already returned to his vegetables. He smiles down at his hands, looking insufferably smug, and it is only then that she notices.

 ‘What are you _doing_?’ she demands, halting him with a hand on his wrist. He looks up, startled.

 ‘As I’m told,’ he says mildly.

 He has obediently cut the vegetables into roughly equal pieces as she indicated, but has discarded the kitchen knife and is instead using his _main gauche_ to pare potatoes. She gestures at it impotently and he nods in understanding.

 ‘Your knife is blunt. I’ll take it to the Garrison tonight and sharpen it for you if you like. And the sword is rather unwieldy, for vegetables…’

 ‘The knife is _fine_. You can’t prepare food with that, Aramis, it’s…’

 He’s stopped, and is looking at her as though genuinely confused.

 ‘You’ve _killed people_ with it,’ she hisses.

 He blinks. ‘Well yes. But I’ve cleaned it.’

 She frowns at the heap of diced vegetables and tries to decide whether it’s worth pursuing the argument. After a moment she picks up the kitchen knife and tests its edge with a thumb. It _is_ a bit blunt. He plucks it from her fingers and pockets it, and the gesture is somehow even more infuriating than it would otherwise be for the fact that he pointedly doesn’t say that he told her so. She goes back to her pots and pans.

 D’Artagnan arrives next, bouncing on the balls of his feet when she opens the door. He looks like he’s combed his hair, and he produces a fistful of raggedy wild flowers from behind his back like an idiot, and she’s smiling too widely to worry about her neighbours seeing yet another musketeer invited into her house.

 Aramis shoots a grin at d’Artagnan and goes back to his investigation of her cupboard. She told him to lay the table. She can only hope this task doesn’t turn out to involve any weapons.

 D’Artagnan repeats the story of the provincial Vicomte and the vintage port in further detail, and she makes sympathetic noises and doesn’t tell him that she’s already heard it; nor does she comment on his omission of the detail that the soiled shirt was his only clean one and so the one he’s wearing is Aramis’ and has a lace collar stitched with a noble lady’s distinctive initials.

 Laughing at them both she feels drunk with joy. Jacques is away for four days. And if her “brother” occasionally invites his friends to dine at Constance’s house in his absence, well, her neighbours cannot protest the propriety.

 The meal is simmering gently by the time Porthos and Athos knock. ‘Evenin’,’ says Porthos, grinning at her, and Athos nods politely and passes her a bottle of wine.

 The food is basic, and she doesn’t tell the others that Aramis cut the vegetables with his parrying dagger though she suspects none of them would care. The wine is exquisite, and she’s a little flustered by that and tries to pretend not to be. D’Artagnan sits close to her and holds her hand when they’re both finished eating but makes no further attempt at romantic gestures, and Aramis and Porthos tell them wildly improbable stories which make her laugh till her face aches. When they leave, d’Artagnan lingers to give her a quick, chaste kiss, while the others pretend to be terribly busy buckling their swords back into place, and they all bow to her before they troop off into the night. She clears up and goes to bed tired and happy.

 They return the following evening, later and tired, having spent the day ferrying a wearying series of messages between the Cardinal at the palace and the King at his hunting lodge, but they still bring her wine and flowers and bow to her like she’s the queen, and she enjoys the imaginative revenges they plot against Richelieu almost as much as the tall tales of the previous evening.

 In another life, she thinks sleepily, as Athos tops up her wine glass, this could have been real, not just a few days’ game at being a different person.

 It’s late – too late for visitors really – when a noisy knock sounds at the door. All four musketeers are already at her table, so she’s startled, but goes to answer it anyway. The commotion gets more frantic even in the time it takes her to get from the table to the door.

 ‘Are you Madame Bonacieux?’ asks the ragamuffin boy on her doorstep, and she nods. He thrusts a note at her and sprints off into the night, and she stares after him blankly.

 She shakes off the surprise and unfurls the note, gasping when Jacques’ earring tumbles out of the folded paper into her hand.

 ‘Constance?’

 D’Artagnan is on his feet, reaching out to her, and the other three are looking up curious from the table. She bends her head to read. The words squirm on the page and don’t make sense, and she says ‘…what?’ to the paper in confusion, then feels d’Artagnan take it from her hand.

 ‘Is everything alright?’ Athos is asking, eyes narrowing shrewdly as he watches d’Artagnan read.

 She looks bewildered between the four of them and says weakly, ‘Apparently my husband has been kidnapped.’

  


	2. a dilemma

She waits in the anteroom with Athos on one side and d’Artagnan on the other, her stomach twisting with nerves. Damn Jacques for making her do this.

She’s never been frightened to speak her mind. She’s proficient at dealing with musketeers by now, and with their erratic but patient training she’s not afraid of a fight, either. Only two nights ago she rapped Athos on the knuckles with a spoon for drinking wine direct from the bottle and he was wide-eyed with surprise while the others creased up laughing. Constance is not afraid of much. But she is, standing in the panelled anteroom with her knees weak, she is afraid of the Cardinal.

The door opens and the Red Guards flanking it nod at her, smirking slightly and sneering openly at her musketeer escort.

The Cardinal doesn’t look up from his desk. Should she curtsey? Since he isn’t looking at her, there doesn’t seem much point. She inclines her head in what she hopes is a deferential manner – deferential has never been Constance’s strong point – and says softly ‘Your Eminence.’

‘Be quick about it, I am very busy,’ he snaps without looking up, and d’Artagnan shifts angrily at her side.

‘Your Eminence,’ she repeats, croaking a bit, ‘I am Madame Bonacieux –‘

‘I know who you are,’ he says levelly, lifting his head from his papers at last to glare frankly at her. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I came to you because you are my husband’s patron,’ she explains carefully. Athos and d’Artagnan, either side of her, are staring insolently because they all know precisely why the Cardinal became Jacques’ sponsor. ‘I learnt last night that he has met with some misfortune on the road. He is being held for ransom, and he has apparently informed his captors that you will be glad to help him, as his patron.’

Richelieu’s granite gaze is fixed on her and she wants to shuffle her feet under its intensity, but she manages not to. There is a silence that stretches too long, each second the weight of his look becomes heavier and more suffocating.

At last, he says, ‘Indeed?’

She inclines her head again, a sort of awkward half-curtsey, because there’s not much more to say.

‘I’m afraid your husband has misunderstood the nature of our contract,’ he says quickly, like a dismissal. She stares at him for a moment, unmoving, and he adds waspishly ‘How unfortunate.’

‘It is my understanding that Monsieur Bonacieux is still under contract to you. The least you can do is pay him his fee in advance to settle the ransom,’ Athos says flatly, meeting Richelieu’s gaze steady as always.

 ‘You’re mistaken,’ the Cardinal replies, and there’s venom creeping into his gaze as he looks from Athos to d’Artagnan. Constance is nothing to him, an inconvenience, and he’s already just waiting for her to go away, but he despises the musketeers.

‘My husband,’ Constance says shakily, ‘has been a faithful servant to you, your Eminence.’

The Cardinal looks amused at that. ‘And I am saddened to hear of his misfortune.’

He turns back to his papers, and when they still don’t move he waves a hand and two Red Guards move in and start edging them out of the room. D’Artagnan has his hand on his sword hilt, and she doesn’t want him to get himself arrested for starting a fight _in the Cardinal’s office_ , the hot-headed idiot, so she takes him gently by the arm and the three of them walk out.

‘Missing your husband terribly, Madame?’ says one of the guards as soon as they’re out of the Cardinal’s earshot, with a smirking look between her and d’Artagnan. Athos gives him a very calm, very level look and he shrugs insolently but gets out of their way.

They clearly look dejected enough when they get back to the Garrison that neither Porthos nor Aramis bothers to ask if they were successful with the Cardinal.

 ‘We should have known better than to ask him,’ says d’Artagnan, scowling.

Constance chews her lip. Jacques should have known better than to tell his kidnappers that he had friends in high places, because the ransom demand is far more than Constance can afford and she’ll be laughed at if she goes to moneylenders, a woman on her own. He was a fool to tell them, and she was a fool to even ask. Since d’Artagnan no longer lives with them, Jacques is just a spy who’s outlived his usefulness as far as the Cardinal is concerned, and one less person who knows too much about Richelieu’s scheming against the musketeers is probably a good thing from his point of view. Jacques is just a draper with an inflated sense of his own importance, and his ransom is worth nothing to anyone but Constance and the thing is, how much is it _really_ worth to Constance?

The musketeers are all on duty that afternoon; they salute her apologetically as they ride out and she trudges home, thinking.

She doesn’t like to think of Jacques in the hands of criminals. She has enough experience of that herself to know how cold and bleak with fear it can be, and she knows that he is more easily frightened than she is. She remembers him wobbling in the saddle as he rode off and Aramis laughing at him and she feels guilty. Jacques is not like the musketeers: he doesn’t have their swagger, their boldness, their skill. And God knows, for her sins, she has hated him: when he threatened d’Artagnan to make her obey him she would have cut his throat right there if she’d had a weapon to hand, and more often she has felt a quiet, creeping hatred, wondering about the life she might have had if she hadn’t been shackled to him so young. But her hating him doesn’t make him a bad man, and it doesn’t change the fact that he is her responsibility.

The Cardinal won’t help, and the ransom can’t be paid. Constance could offer maybe a tenth of it, if she pawned a few things and shot the padlock off Jacques’ strongbox. Ride out alone to the remote crossroads specified in the ransom note with a fraction of the money they asked for – it doesn’t sound like a sensible plan.

If she asks, the musketeers will help her. She knows that like her fingers know needlework: automatic and familiar and certain. Porthos and Aramis and d’Artagnan have scarcely a sou between them, because like the idiots that they are they spend their whole stipend on wine and gun oil at the beginning of the month and then mope around for three weeks, charming free meals out of kind-hearted tavern matrons (d’Artagnan), staying with a series of devoted female admirers (Aramis), or supplementing their income with the spoils of dodgy card games (Porthos). Athos is different, of course, because he has money and is somewhat more sensible with what he has, but she’ll die before she asks Athos to pay her husband’s ransom.

Of course, the likelihood is that these kidnappers are a poorly organised bunch and the musketeers could overwhelm them in moments and break Jacques out of captivity by force. But they might _not_ be so easily defeated, and if she asks them and they end up getting shot, or stabbed, or worse, then she will never forgive herself and she’ll never, _never_ forgive Jacques.

At home, in a house that has never felt quite so empty, she sits down at the table and stares at her hands.

The appeal of doing nothing is undeniable. They’ll kill Jacques, and she’ll be a widow, and her neighbours will pity her. As a widow she can run the business legally herself and she knows that she’d be good at it. Her neighbours are not jealous of her dresses for no reason: she has made gowns for the queen herself. Constance could be a success, and happy, and in a year’s time when propriety has been served by a period of sober mourning she could marry d’Artagnan and be loved and safe and have her house full of laughter every night of the week. Isn’t that exactly what she was daydreaming, before all this happened?

She knows she isn’t the only one to have thought it. She caught d’Artagnan looking at her thoughtfully before they left the Garrison, and she could see that beautiful future playing out in his head too.

If only, she thinks wretchedly, Jacques deserved it a little bit more. Jacques has been thoughtless and sometimes cruel, but he has never been violent, and in his clumsy, needy, selfish way he loves her, she does know that. He loves the fact that she is young and pretty and the men he does business with always make a point of saying they’re jealous of his good fortune. And sometimes he surprised her with kindness, in the days before d’Artagnan, he brought home pastries that he knew she liked, or reams of leftover cloth in colours that suited her. She never loved him but she didn’t always hate him and he doesn’t, _doesn’t_ deserve this.

After a while she goes up to the bedroom and lifts the floorboard and heaves out the strongbox, and after fiddling impotently with the padlock for a bit she gets up, empties all the stockings out of a drawer to get at the pistol in the back. She aims, covers her eyes as Aramis told her to and fires. She feels sparks sear her hand, but the padlock is broken. 

She makes herself count, carefully and methodically. The sum in the strongbox is a bit more than she’d expected, actually, but not _much_ more. She empties it all into a purse, knowing that Jacques will be livid and not really caring. There’s not much else that she needs, but she packs a few things, reloads the pistol and hides it carefully in her skirts, and swings a cloak around her shoulders.

Dusk is gathering when she leaves the house again, and the air is cold. The Garrison is quiet; the musketeers aren’t back yet which she is grateful for, and she makes her way into the barracks. She knows the room she’s looking for well enough, from the last time she was here in dire straits, and it is unlocked because its owner, it does well to remember, is an _idiot._

The room itself is as bare as she remembers it: bed, chair, cupboard, some books. She sits down to wait.

It’s full dark when she hears the hooves in the yard. Muffled voices, weary again – she knows they hate accompanying the king’s hunting party, it’s dull and exhausting and they can’t let their guard down but still nine times out of ten nothing happens at all. There’s more than one set of footsteps in the corridor, but Porthos’ voice calls ‘G’night,’ and when the door opens Aramis is alone. His eyebrows disappear almost into his hairline when he sees her, and he glances uncertainly over his shoulder before he looks back and meets her eyes. 

‘Good evening, Constance,’ he says softly. He comes forward and she stands, feeling a little ashamed to be found sitting on his bed. ‘Are you alright?’ He winces as if he knows this was a stupid question, and touches her arm gently.

She nods, and then feels suddenly tearful and shakes her head. He senses immediately that sympathy will make her cry, so he winks roguishly at her and says, ‘What _are_ you doing in my den of iniquity, Constance, people will _talk_.’

‘You’re my brother, remember,’ she shoots back automatically, and he strikes himself theatrically on the forehead.

‘ _Santa Maria,_ you’re right, I had forgotten. What can I do for you, fair sister?’

She explains, carefully, what she has in mind. He listens patiently, but he looks worried.

‘And I _can’t_ ask d’Artagnan,’ she concludes wretchedly, feeling tearful again. ‘Because he hates Jacques, and with good reason. And I can’t ask him to…’

Aramis nods slowly. 

‘Will you…? Aramis, I’m sorry to ask. I know it’s not…’

He shivers like a startled cat and waves a hand dismissively. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Anything for my sister,’ he adds, winking at her. ‘I owe you my life, remember?’

She remembers that whole incident rather differently, but she’s given up disputing the frequently-told tale of how she saved Aramis’ life by hitting a man over the head with a chair.

‘But we can’t sneak off without a word, because I will be in a great deal of trouble for abducting you under d’Artagnan’s nose, and _you_ will be in a great deal of trouble for abducting me under Porthos’.’

 She grins at that, despite herself.

 ‘And we can’t leave now, because you are exhausted.’ He bites his lip thoughtfully, and then suddenly says, ‘Well then,’ and leaves the room.

‘ _Aramis_ ,’ she hisses, trailing after him.

He’s already knocking on the door that must be Porthos’, and a muffled voice from inside says ‘F’ckoff, Aramis, m’sleep.’

 Aramis knocks again and whispers, ‘I apologise profusely for my comrade’s crude language,’ and pushes the door open without waiting for an invitation.

 ‘F’ck _off_ , Aramis,’ says the heap of blankets that currently constitutes Porthos, shifting unhappily in the light from the corridor.

‘We need your help,’ Aramis says softly and Porthos raises his head blearily to see what he means by _we_ and startles when he sees Constance.

‘We’re going after my husband,’ Constance says awkwardly when he stares at her a beat too long. Porthos raises his eyebrows and gives Aramis a sceptical look.

 ‘D’you get the ransom?’

‘No,’ Constance says ruefully. ‘I’ve got forty-six livres.’

 Porthos raises his eyebrows as if this sounds like riches, and perhaps it does, but all he says is. ‘What did they ask for?’

‘Five hundred.’

‘Hmm.’

She looks down at her hands, feeling childish and ridiculous but stubborn all the same.

‘So you two are gonna go offer them forty-six livres in exchange for Bonacieux, and you woke me up to tell me…’

Aramis doesn’t look even remotely apologetic. ‘Because I need you to cover for me with d’Artagnan. And I need you to let me sleep in your room.’

‘What?’ says Constance, ‘Why?’

‘Because _you_ will be sleeping in mine.’

Constance blinks, taken aback. Porthos is grumbling something she can’t hear, but he looks like he’s going to help, and some of the knots in her stomach ease a little bit.

‘This is a good idea, is it?’ he asks the ceiling, and Constance isn’t sure whether to reply or not, so she just shrugs.

‘Of course it is,’ Aramis says. He outlines the plan for Porthos very quickly: where the meeting point is, how long it ought to take them to get there and back and precisely when to start worrying if they don’t reappear. He plans to leave an hour before roll call because given how late they got in the chances of Athos or d’Artagnan stirring in time to stop them are thin.

‘You’re gonna leave me to deal with Athos,’ Porthos says mournfully.

‘You can tell him it’s all my fault,’ Aramis says.

Constance is on the point of arguing that actually they can tell Athos it is _her_ fault but Porthos just groans and punches Aramis in the arm and says ‘You know how he is for shooting the messenger.’ Aramis winces sympathetically. 

Aramis won’t be talked out of giving his room up for her, and doesn’t so much as take a spare blanket with him into Porthos’ room. Porthos takes it in his stride as if this is a regular occurrence, and she’s too tired to wonder if maybe it is.

Constance doesn’t sleep well; mostly she lies on her back on Aramis’ bed and stares at the ceiling and worries. She worries about Jacques, who doesn’t have the constitution to bear captivity well. She worries about what d’Artagnan will think, when he hears that she has gone in secret to save the husband who stands in the way of their happiness, and that she has involved his friends in the venture without telling him. She worries about herself, and what sort of person it makes her that she made this choice, and what sort of person it makes her that she came so very close to making a different one.

 In the grey morning light in the courtyard, the two musketeers have prepared horses and provisions before she joins them, and she thinks guiltily that they probably haven’t slept much either: two grown men in Porthos’ narrow bed must have been a squeeze.

 ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ says Porthos, and Aramis grins widely. Turning to Constance, Porthos adds ‘You keep an eye on him, yeah Constance?’

She attempts a smile.

‘Do I have to remind you what happened _last_ time we left you two to mind one another?’ Porthos grumbles, and Constance blinks in shock. She can’t believe he’d bring up so lightly something still recent that nearly killed both of them, when the scar on Aramis’ hand is still so clear and the one on his shoulder must be even worse. When she herself still sometimes wakes shaking from nightmares about it. But Aramis just laughs, and so she tries not to be shocked, tries to look at it like they do: just another anecdote in a life full of danger and madness.

‘I’ll keep an eye on him,’ she promises, and her voice sounds a bit frail but Porthos grins at her.

‘Reckon you’ve got your hands full,’ he says as he helps her to mount.

Aramis mounts his own horse, salutes Porthos with a finger to the brim of his hat and follows her out.

 


	3. transaction

 

They ride fast through the waking city, keeping up the pace until they’re well out on the road, outside the city walls where the dwellings are less organised and slowly thin out. She tugs the reins to bring the horse into an easy trot and Aramis pulls alongside her, eyes thoughtfully on the road ahead.

She looks at him sideways and feels guilty again because he really doesn’t look like he’s slept much. ‘Will Athos really be angry?’ she asks, because Athos always seems like his equilibrium is more or less unshakeable but the idea of him actually angry does make her a bit nervous.

‘Hmm?’ says Aramis. ‘Oh no. He knew this would happen.’

Constance blinks, frowning at the back of the horse’s neck. ‘What?’

‘Constance, you are far too good a woman to allow your weasel husband to be killed by bandits,’ he explains gently. She bristles at his tone, but there’s no point in saying anything. She knows what they think of Jacques, and she doesn’t even _really_ disagree with them. At this point, Jacques has caused all four of them enough inconvenience that they’ve earned the right to be rude about him, even if Constance finds it irrationally upsetting.

‘We were never intending to let you go on your own,’ Aramis explains.

It occurs to her that they’ve been discussing what to do about Jacques between themselves the whole time she has been agonising over it in isolation like it’s a decision only she can make, and she feels at the same time annoyed with them for high-handedness, and so, so grateful.

‘Athos may be angry that it falls to him to mind d’Artagnan,’ Aramis says, starting to look a bit mischievous again, ‘because d’Artagnan is a nightmare when he’s worrying about you.’

She feels faintly warmed by that, but tries to look contrite and apologises mockingly for being the cause of d’Artagnan’s ill humour because she knows it will make him laugh.

‘Quite right. You owe us for a great many evenings ruined by d’Artagnan spouting bad poetry in your praise. It is exceedingly tiresome.’

She demands details of d’Artagnan’s alleged poetic endeavours, and for a while he takes her mind off worrying by improvising appalling sentimental rhymes.

It’s less than a day’s ride to the specified meeting point if they make good time, and Constance wants this over with as soon as it can be. The purse is weighing heavy against her thigh, and the pistol against the other. One way or another, she wants this over. Aramis is armed to the teeth as usual, and the likelihood is that these bandits are amateurs who’ve bitten off more than they can chew with Constance and her friends, and this should be easy. It doesn’t stop the nagging worry, but it helps a bit to keep reminding herself. This should be easy.

They stop at an inn a mile from their destination to run over the plan one more time and make sure everything is in place, and Aramis makes her eat something and then they ride on. Early evening, the shadows are just lengthening and the light turning a warm yellow. Constance knows the countryside can be beautiful, but here the road is muddy and flat and the trees are dark and ragged; there’s a joyless utility to the landscape that makes her long for Paris.

Aramis salutes her smiling as he leaves the road and slips into the trees and she breathes shakily as she goes on alone. At the crossroads, she brings the horse to a halt and waits. Sunset was the agreement. If they think there’s any chance she’s carrying the Cardinal’s five hundred livres, they probably won’t be late.

It’s quiet in a way that Paris is never quiet, so she hears the rustling immediately and spins round sharply at the arrival of four mounted men. They’re dragging a dishevelled figure with a sack over his head and she knows it is Jacques.

‘Madame,’ one of the men calls, and she nods carefully at him. She doesn’t bother to pretend she isn’t nervous. They will be expecting her to be nervous.

‘You got the money?’ one of the others demands; apparently there is to be no further small talk.

‘All the money I have,’ Constance hedges, and they shift warningly with a scrape of metal.

‘Not a penny less than the price, Madame, or we’ll have to do something regrettable.’

‘It’s all I have,’ Constance repeats, hefting the purse with one hand.

‘He’s the Cardinal’s man!’ one of the men insists, ‘the Cardinal can afford more than…’

‘The Cardinal could not help,’ Constance says levelly, and she hears Jacques inhale sharply. One of his captors nudges him in the ribs with a foot.

‘You said the Cardinal’d pay handsomely for you. F’you’re not worth anything we should’ve killed you days ago. Would’ve saved us the moaning.’

‘How much is your husband worth to you, Madame?’ asks the marginally better-spoken one, ignoring his men’s complaints.

‘I’ve got forty-six livres,’ Constance says steadily and she hears Jacques whimpering under his sack.

‘Is that all? You can have one of his fingers for that. Which do you want?’

Constance swallows hard, reminding herself that Aramis is here somewhere, but before she can speak Jacques has fallen awkwardly to his knees in the muddy road croaking, ‘Please _, please…!’_

‘Shut up,’ says the man nearest him, kicking him again. ‘Lying scumbag. Never seen the Cardinal in his life.’

‘No please,’ Jacques says, shrill even under the muffling sack. ‘My wife! My wife is a favourite of the Queen!’

No, you _idiot_ , Constance thinks.

‘Yeah, really?’ grumbles the kidnapper. ‘How about the King of Spain, he your friend as well?’ 

‘It’s true, it’s true, I promise,’ Jacques pleads recklessly. ‘Constance, you must ask the Queen…’

‘Quiet!’ she tells him sharply, starting to panic now, where is Aramis?

‘Maybe the wife’s worth more…’ mumbles one of the kidnappers thoughtfully.  ‘One thousand livres, for the life of the Queen’s favourite…’

‘The Queen will pay!’ Jacques cries, ‘she will pay you any sum…’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ says Constance, edging her fingers toward her pistol. Oh God, she thinks, they’re starting to believe him.

The man opposite points a gun at her and says ‘Off the horse, Madame,’ and then the crossroads echo with the sudden bellow of a pistol and she wonders for a frantic second if she’s been shot. Then she sees the bandit cradling a bleeding hand and his pistol on the ground, and she fumbles her own weapon out as fast as she can. Aramis might have another shot, he carries more than one pistol she thinks, but there are four of them. She aims at the one closest to Jacques and gets him in the upper arm – not a kill shot, not really good enough, but he falls from the horse and it gives her a second to spur forwards. Jacques is still on his knees, looking around comically unseeing and shouting something.

Another shot, and a bandit drops dead off his horse in the act of reaching for his pistol, his face a bloody ruin. Aramis gallops out of the trees in a storm of leather and lethal intent.

The last uninjured bandit has dismounted and is approaching Jacques with sword drawn. Aramis leaps from his horse to get between them, his own sword flashing out to meet it. Constance wheels around, gripping the reins with a white-knuckled hand. The man Aramis shot in the hand is getting up, drawing a dagger awkwardly with his left hand. The one she wounded is still down but he’s moving, and then a shot echoes out of the trees.

‘There are more of them!’ she cries. Aramis shoots a glance at her and nearly loses his head, spinning back in time to block the swing and finish the fight with a vicious thrust.

‘Let’s go!’ is all he says, and he seizes Jacques by the back of his collar like a disobedient dog. ‘Go, Constance!’ He slaps her horse on the rump, dragging Jacques with him. He shoves Jacques bodily over his saddle without untying him or even removing the sack from his head, and Jacques is still shrieking his fury incoherently.

The man with the dagger lunges at Aramis, but he ducks and kicks him in the face as he mounts and spurs his horse after Constance, with Jacques flailing and shouting in front of him.

She thinks they’ll make it, messy and chaotic though the rescue is, until she hears another shot ring out from the trees and has time to be grateful she’s not injured before she feels her horse stumble and go down. She gasps, doesn’t have the breath to cry out. Aramis calls out something, but she’s too busy rolling away from the horse’s bulk.

Poor thing, it’s dead, she thinks wildly. Aramis pulls up behind her. Another shot splinters the bark of a tree nearby, and Aramis is dismounting, his boots splash loudly in the mud. He yanks Jacques down by the back of his jacket and finally rips the sack off his head.

‘Run!’ Aramis barks in Jacques’ face, shoving him towards the trees. He bends to take Constance by the elbow and haul her to her feet. There’s mud all down her cloak and the front of her skirts, making them heavy with water, and she stumbles as Aramis pulls her into the trees. In the hollow behind a fallen tree, he pushes her down to the ground, peering over it back towards the road. Jacques slumps down beside them.

‘Are you alright?’ Aramis gasps, and she nods though she’s not really sure if it’s true. She’s shaky and numb with shock, and she feels off-balance. He’s reloading his pistols, hands moving fast and sure, one eye on the tree line.

Jacques is panting hard, and he seems to have been struck dumb by the panic of battle, but now he looks across Aramis at Constance and croakily he says ‘ _Another_ musketeer? You betrayed me again! I will be a laughing stock. You are having an affair with _another_ musketeer!’

Constance feels Aramis freeze next to her, startled, and for a moment she’s too shocked by how monumentally unreasonable this is to even speak. ‘ _No_ ,’ she starts, but Aramis is quicker and has seized him by the collar, looming over him in his crouch though Jacques is not a small man.

‘Apologise to your wife _immediately_ Monsieur,’ Aramis orders, and he looks dangerous enough that Constance is afraid for a moment that he really will kill him; she lays a hand on his shoulder and mumbles ‘it’s fine,’ though it really isn’t.

Jacques looks uncertainly from Aramis to Constance and croaks, ‘I… apologise.’

Aramis releases him, leaning forward to peer through the undergrowth. They’re quite well covered here, but if there are enough bandits to surround them, with the horses gone, Constance doesn’t see a way out of this.

She crawls over and starts tugging at the knots still tying Jacques’ hands. He does look a bit battered and very miserable, but he doesn’t seem seriously hurt, which she is glad of. Still, they’re hardly out of danger yet – she is sharply reminded of this when splinters spit at them off the fallen tree. Aramis lurches up and fires back and she thinks she hears a man cry out, but can’t be sure.

She dropped her own pistol when she fell from the horse, and she feels like an idiot for that, but she is carrying shot and powder in her belt, so she leaves Jacques still half-untied and says to Aramis ‘Give me that,’ and sets herself to reloading the pistol.

‘Why didn’t you bring the money?’ Jacques bleats, staring impotently at his hands.

‘Why did you tell them the Cardinal would pay for you?’ Constance hisses at him.

Aramis has been ignoring them, his whole attention on the men in the trees, but he twists now, eyes narrowed. ‘Damn,’ he says under his breath. Constance looks up in alarm. Before she can ask, another shot passes between their heads and she flattens herself in the leaf mulch, gasping.

Aramis returns the shot but it doesn’t sound like it connects; the trees are not necessarily their friends.

‘You’re surrounded!’ calls a voice, much closer than Constance had thought they were. She looks up automatically but Aramis has a hand on her shoulder to keep her close to the ground.

Jacques is muttering something under his breath that might be a prayer. He’s wearing the much-prized shirt he had kept for his important meeting, she realises; it’s nearly unrecognisable with mud and sweat.

‘Give us the woman and we’ll let you go!’

Constance’s stomach flips over unpleasantly. Aramis swears under his breath.

‘Give us the woman! We won’t hurt her. Come back in two days with a thousand livres and no fucking musketeers and we’ll let her go, no trouble.’

Apparently it is _Jacques_ who is being addressed here, while she and Aramis have been demoted to ‘the woman’ and ‘the fucking musketeer’ respectively. She can see him grinning as if this is all very amusing and wonders for the first time whether she should have asked Porthos or Athos to help her instead, because Aramis is a bit mad and he likes this a bit too much.

Jacques clears his throat, and without even looking at him Aramis clamps muddy fingers firmly over his mouth.

‘They’re moving,’ he mouths to Constance, tipping his head to one side. She hands him the reloaded pistol without a word. He has to let go of Jacques to take it and hand her the other empty one, and Jacques spits in disgust on the ground.

‘Just hand her over!’ cajoles the voice in the trees, and Aramis fires so fast she hardly sees him move, and there’s a strangled yell nearby.

Aramis winces and shakes his head. He got him then, but not dead.

Jacques shifts edgily, clearly very aware of Aramis so close and so dangerous, and says to Constance, ‘Do you think if you…?’

‘Hush,’ she says, because she really doesn’t want to have to hear him suggest that she should go with the bandits she just _rescued_ him from in order to save all their skins. 

‘Constance, we’ll _all_ be killed,’ he whines, and she thinks, as if you care _at all_ if Aramis gets killed. ‘You know the Queen will pay for you. It’s the only way, Constance.’

She feels all the blood draining out of her face in shocked anger. She’s never loved him but she hasn’t always hated him, but holy _God_ she hates him right now.

Aramis drops down again almost flat on his back, half-propped against the tree, and he reloads the pistol again in swift movements. Then he passes it to her.

‘Aramis…’ she says blankly. ‘No.’

‘I’m going to get round behind them,’ he whispers, easing his sword out of its sheath very slowly.

‘I don’t like this,’ she says, knowing that it won’t make a blind bit of difference.

He smiles tightly. ‘Keep firing. Distract them. You’re well covered here if you keep your head down.’

‘I’m meant to be keeping an eye on you,’ she reminds him, partly to lighten the mood because it’s what he wants and partly to reiterate that he _really_ isn’t an acceptable casualty of this mission.

He just grins, which is exactly what she expected but not reassuring. He turns to Jacques looking stern; it’s a strange look on him. ‘Monsieur, can you load a pistol?’

Jacques stares blankly at him, distrustful and out of his depth.

‘Never mind,’ Aramis says, glancing to Constance. ‘Stay very quiet and still and keep out of Constance’s way,’ he instructs Jacques, and he clasps Constance’s upper arm hard as if for a moment he’s forgotten that she isn’t Porthos, and then he vaults out of their hideaway and is gone. Shots ring out, but they miss him, and Constance returns fire. She’s gratified by the spray of blood, and then a little bit ashamed of herself for becoming so bloodthirsty.

She ducks to reload and counts the balls left in her little pouch. Six shots left, and Aramis’ sword, and an unknown number of bandits. Soon it will be too dark to see, and her pistol will be all but useless. She listens to her husband huffing panicked next to her and thinks, damn you for making me do this.


	4. flight

Reloading again in the gathering dusk, and Constance wonders why she ever thought the countryside was too quiet. It’s a cacophony of rustling and footsteps and the ringing after gunfire, and every tiny sound shocks through her like lightning. Jacques breathing beside her is horribly loud in her ears, and there was a clatter of swords nearby but she can’t hear them now and Aramis isn’t back yet.

‘How many of them are there?’ she whispers. Jacques blinks at her as though she’s suddenly speaking Spanish and she nudges him urgently with the pistol in her hand, which makes him whimper as if he actually thinks she might shoot him. ‘You were with them for two days. How many are there?’

He hums a little, clearing his throat. ‘There seemed to be hundreds,’ he says bleakly. She snorts at how useless this is, and he grips her arm in one cold hand. ‘Constance, what are you…?’

She catches a movement in the trees and raises the pistol, but then she thinks _what if it’s Aramis?_ and hesitates. The gunshot rings out sudden and catastrophic, and she throws herself to the floor again. She feels winded, the world tilted and strange, and is only vaguely aware of Jacques tugging the pistol out of her hand, but the shot is deafening. She rolls over, blinking.

‘Did you get him?’ she croaks. He looks sheepish, and he’s cradling his wrist from the recoil. She doesn’t know if he’s ever fired a pistol before. 

The man has ducked back behind his cover, but he must still be close by. Constance’s head is ringing from how close that ball passed, and she feels dizzy and drunk with fear; Aramis must be catching because she grins stupidly at Jacques and his appalled expression makes her want to laugh out loud.

He’s dropped the pistol and is staring at it like it might leap up of its own accord and bite him. Constance reaches for it shakily – she is mud from head to toe now, her skirts and cloak weighing her down with cascades of damp, muddy fabric – and starts to reload again. The pouch on her belt is rattling, all but empty. Two more shots.

The shadows have darkened enough that shooting by sight is hopeless. She could kill Aramis by accident, or waste her last shots by burying them in trees. Soon it might be dark enough to risk creeping away, but she won’t be stealthy in these skirts and she still doesn’t know how many of them are out there. Jacques is speechless with fright and she doesn’t _blame_ him exactly but it is worse than being on her own, her fear feeds off his panic and she can’t think; her head is ringing and she feels bruised all down one side.

Jacques shivers and huddles closer to her. He’s making tiny noises like stifled sobbing, and though he’s ten years older than her all she can think to do is shush him like a child, patting awkwardly at his arm.

Rustling in the dark could be birds or something, she thinks. She doesn’t know about woods, she was born in Paris, but she’s sure there are things in the woods that make rustling noises and _don’t_ carry guns.

A shadow too large and heavy to be a bird hurtles over the tree and rolls to a halt; Jacques _shrieks_ and Constance raises the gun in a hand steadier than it has any right to be and rasps ‘stay back.’ And the shadow lifts its head in the scattered light and _grins_ at her.

Her head falls back – her whole body goes limp with relief – and she huffs out a ragged breath at the sky. ‘My God, Aramis,’ she croaks.

‘Did you miss me terribly, Constance?’ he whispers, creeping closer.

 Jacques recovers himself enough to grunt in disapproval.

Aramis hasn’t stopped grinning, and she intends, despite her weary arms, to slap him as soon as he comes in range. As if he has developed a sixth sense for such things, he halts just out of it; crouching, she can make out his face pale in the fading light.

 ‘Are you alright?’ he asks her, serious now. He’s a man of opposites, she thinks, he’s either painfully sincere or completely ridiculous and there is no middle ground.

She mutters something vaguely affirmative, because she assumes by ‘are you alright?’ he means ‘are you more or less intact?’ She feels very far from alright.

‘Are they still out there?’

He hums noncommittally. ‘I killed two. Wounded a third. There are more but they were retreating.’

‘They’re not going to let us go,’ she says, knowing this with a grim certainty.

 Aramis cuts his eyes towards Jacques and back again, contemptuous. ‘No. They are convinced that your ransom is worth a princely sum and they’re stupid enough to keep this up. They’ll block the roads; they might try tracking us with dogs. They know we lost the horses.’ 

Constance is cold and so tired and her limbs are aching and she feels bleak. She squeezes her eyes closed and whispers, ‘We should never have come here.’

Aramis reaches over to squeeze her arm.

‘It’ll be fine. We make for the inn, and we stay there until the others come looking for us. We both know they won’t really wait until tomorrow night; they’ll miss us too much.’

In the gloom his eyes are very dark and he stares at her intently as if waiting for her to agree that everything will be fine. He’s an idiot, she thinks, and the thought is reassuringly familiar. The heavy hopelessness in her limbs dissipates a bit, and she nods slowly.

She puts out a hand and lets him tug her slowly to her feet. As she rises she half expects the crack of a pistol, but the woods are quiet around them. Jacques stumbles up at her side, apparently still dumb with shock. Constance takes one step and her ankle sends a jolt of nausea-inducing heat right up her leg to her stomach and starts to crumple.

‘Constance!’

She can’t see for a moment. When the present surges back to her she’s crushed against Aramis’ chest, clinging to his collar with one hand while he holds her by the waist and elbow.

‘What hurts?’ he asks softly.

She screws up her face and tries to breathe out the nausea. ‘My ankle,’ she chokes, hazy with shock. ‘It must have been when I fell…’

‘Damn.’ He’s still for a moment, thinking. ‘I can’t carry you; if we’re attacked it could be very sudden.’ With what appears to be great reluctance, he turns to acknowledge Jacques’ presence for the first time since he returned.  ‘Monsieur, come here.’

 Jacques bristles, but he comes over, and without making eye contact with one another the two men hoist her upwards and settle her in Jacques’ arms. Aramis steps back, meeting her eyes uncertainly, and she nods shakily at him.

It feels peculiar. Jacques has never been given to romantic gestures but he did peremptorily carry her over the threshold on their wedding day. His grip is stronger now than it was then: he’s not a small man, and terror can give strength as surely as it takes it away. It feels like a mockery of what a terrible husband and wife they make, and she’s embarrassed to be carried by him.

 She is furious with herself. She came here willing to fight, carrying a pistol, and finds herself helplessly carried by her _husband_ of all people, like the swooning court ladies in Aramis’ tall tales. She grips grimly onto the back of Jacques’ neck, her fingers stiff and cold.

Aramis stoops to pick up both pistols and checks that they’re loaded with a grunt of approval.

They can’t head for the road. Aramis is certain that it will be blocked, and they’ll be easy targets on the road. Instead they head deeper into the undergrowth, and Constance is jostled in her precarious perch as Jacques struggles to keep his footing. They haven’t been walking all that long when Jacques lurches to one knee and Constance is almost certain that she’ll throw up on him for one horrible second until she manages to get the nausea under control. With Aramis’ help she is manoeuvred onto Jacques’ back instead, and that seems better for a while but she can _feel_ him wilting; he doesn’t have the endurance for this, _she_ doesn’t have the endurance for this, and eventually Aramis has no choice but to pass the pistols to Jacques and hoist her onto his own shoulder.

‘I apologise for the indignity, Constance,’ he mutters, as she dangles down his back. At least this way he has one hand free for his sword.

In daylight, on horseback, on the road, the inn had not been very far. Like this…

There hasn’t been much evidence of pursuit. It doesn’t help. Constance feels their pursuers like a looming presence, waiting to swallow them as surely as the darkness.

The only thing stronger than fear is acute embarrassment at being humped around like a sack of flour. Aramis has one arm wrapped around the backs of her legs through all the skirts, and the hilt of his _main gauche_ is close to her face. It’s very uncomfortable. When she lifts her head she can make out Jacques following them – can see his feet, at least, and his pale stockings spattered with mud. The ground is uneven, and though Aramis is moving more smoothly than Jacques had been she’s still being bumped around a lot, bouncing heavily on his shoulder.

 ‘Aramis!’ she gasps, suddenly realising. ‘I’m on your bad shoulder!’

‘Hmm?’ She can’t hear him very clearly, but she can feel the words vibrating in his ribcage as he speaks. ‘It’s fine. Healed, weeks ago.’

‘You shouldn’t be…’

She’s cut off by a gunshot, and the shadows move sickly around them. Aramis moves too fast with her still on his shoulder and she hears the ring of swords meeting; feels the sound stab through her head. Aramis drops to one knee to hastily lower her to the ground, and he’s distracted long enough for someone to kick him hard in the ribs, and he sprawls on the ground, rolling, fumbling his sword out of the tangle of limbs as the other man raises his blade over him but, Constance realises in a rush of horror, not fast enough –

Sparks spit with another gunshot, flaring bright in the gloom. The man falls across Aramis and they’re both indistinguishable from the forest floor for a moment. In the dark again, it takes her a few seconds to realise that the silhouette holding the smoking gun is Jacques. Aramis staggers upright to engage a second attacker – he traps the man’s blade between sword and dagger and forces him back into a tree with enough force to stun, seizes his head and rams it again against the bark so the man drops senseless.

 A sudden stillness. The man Jacques shot is gurgling horribly on the ground, and she can’t quite see where, but she sees the moonlight glint off Aramis’ blade as he finishes him and silence wraps around the three of them again.

 ‘Just two,’ says Constance faintly.

 ‘Scouts,’ Aramis mutters. He takes a halting step towards Jacques, who still has the empty pistol raised, standing like a statue. ‘My thanks, Monsieur,’ says Aramis gently, taking the pistol out of his hand. Jacques shudders and recoils back from him, wrong-footed by unexpected courtesy.

 ‘Constance?’ Aramis is looking around, his silhouette moving agitatedly, and Constance realises he can’t see her.

 ‘Here,’ she says, waving a hand from the floor. ‘Fine.’

Aramis starts reloading the pistol – she can just about see him moving in the dark, and hears the clunk of the ball falling into the barrel. Apparently he can do it by touch.

‘We need to move,’ he says, under his breath like a mantra.

Constance lurches unsteadily to a knee and uses a nearby tree to haul herself upright. She tests the bad ankle very tentatively and feels sickness coil up in her throat again. It’s horribly painful; the pain won’t limit itself to her ankle but shoots right up her leg and makes her stomach twist and her brain muzzy.

‘Do you know how many of them there are?’ Aramis asks sharply.

Jacques huffs in surprise when he realises he is being addressed. Constance can almost see him draw himself up. ‘Enough to overwhelm me, and my apprentice.’

Aramis audibly swallows his reaction to that. ‘Indeed. We have killed – eight? – between us. And perhaps injured one or two more. How many are still searching for us?’

Jacques mumbles something vague, and Aramis doesn’t _quite_ sigh in frustration.

Jacques doesn’t know what to do with Aramis, Constance thinks. With d’Artagnan, he always fell back on the inherent superiority of age, and his greater knowledge of Paris, in order to dismiss the younger man as ignorant and uncouth. The fact that d’Artagnan is clever and reasonably well-bred and lethally good in a fight never meant much to him while all their interactions were on Jacques’ territory, so when he found out about Constance and d’Artagnan he had been outraged that his wife would consort with someone he considered beneath him – it hadn’t, Constance thought, ever occurred to him to worry that d’Artagnan was the better man. Aramis, though, is not so far in age from Jacques and has no touch of naïve uncertainty to make Jacques feel superior. She knows he thinks all the musketeers are brutes, not fit for polite society – she thinks about Aramis paring vegetables with his dagger and Athos swigging wine from the bottle and does not _entirely_ disagree – but out here in the dark only Aramis has any chance of getting them out of this, and Jacques is at a loss for how to even talk to a musketeer when condescension is not an option.

All they get out of him is that Jacques thinks there might be as many as fifteen or twenty, and the man Aramis shot in the hand back at the crossroads seemed to be in charge. In any case, it’s enough for quite a few more scouting parties, and they were lucky this time.

Constance is hauled off her feet again and she clings to Aramis’ back like a limpet with her legs around his waist. ‘This is a compromising position,’ he murmurs, voice very low, and she huffs out startled amusement, drawing a suspicious glance from Jacques.

The dark is insidious. Its sounds shift and shuffle around them, and there’s no way of knowing that they’re going the right way. The moonlight is scattered and patchy and the trees cast shadows easily deep enough for a man to hide in. Constance thinks unbidden of the way her horse crumpled dead underneath her and unconsciously she hugs her limbs tighter around Aramis, taking some comfort in his slightly ragged breathing and the way the muscles in his back shift against her as he walks.

The woods have to end eventually. They can see the trees thinning out only because the moonlight falls in larger pools, and then, very suddenly it seems, there are lights ahead. Aramis stops, reaching forward to tug at Jacques’ coat.

‘The inn…’ Jacques hisses, and Aramis tips his head doubtfully. He taps Constance lightly on the arm, which she takes as an instruction to get off him, and she slides awkwardly to stand, carefully leaning against him and then transferring her weight to a tree. Jacques grasps her forearm, and her first instinct is to flinch, but then she realises he is helping and gives him a shaky nod. They wait, eyes fixed on the distant lights because they’re the only point of reference, while Aramis creeps to the very edge of the tree line. 

There’s not much noise, if this is the inn. In Paris, the taverns’ din leaks out onto the street at this hour of the night: shouting, fighting, singing, all the noise of people packed in and drinking and amusing themselves. Country inns must be different, though, Constance thinks. There just aren’t enough _people_ all the way out here to make that much noise.

In the quiet, a pistol fires.


	5. the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning in this chapter for assault - it isn't a sexual assault, but is briefly and ambiguously misconstrued as one.

_In the quiet, a pistol fires._

Constance bolts forward. She forgets her ankle and it shrieks with pain at her, and Jacques pulls hard on her arm. Gasping, she uses him to stay upright, blinking back tears.

‘We have to – ‘

‘Constance, if they’ve killed that musketeer we have to stay hidden,’ Jacques hisses, holding tight to her arm; ‘they’ll kill us too.’

They can’t have killed him, Constance wants to explain, because she made him come out here to rescue a man that he didn’t like and didn’t owe anything to, and it is completely inconceivable that Aramis could be killed in such circumstances. Keep an eye on him, Porthos said, and she let him out of her sight and she _won’t_ be doing it again.

‘We _have_ to,’ she growls, shaking him off and gritting her teeth tightly to stand. She staggers until she can grab at another tree, draws in a careful breath and takes one, two limping steps before her skirts get tangled in her shaky legs and she lurches to one knee. Jacques scuttles up behind her, gripping her shoulders.

 ‘We’re not going out there, Constance,’ he hisses in her ear, and she doesn’t have the leverage to twist out of his grip; there’s no strength in her sick, watery muscles. 

‘Let me go,’ she gasps, horror tasting bitter in her throat.

‘Stay _still_ ,’ Jacques says, his voice stronger now: it’s unequivocally an order. Perhaps it’s just concern or his own fear making him so vehement, but she balks at it and not just because Aramis may be bleeding somewhere just out of sight. 

She swallows determinedly to settle her stomach and twists to bite his hand – not hard, but hard enough to make him ease his grip in shock and she flops forward onto hands and knees and manages a clumsy crawl, pulling her unwieldy skirts along with her hands in the carpet of rotting pine needles. Jacques lurches after her, though, and he drops down with a knee between her legs, pinning her by the skirts. He leans over her, his weight pressing her down, and his arm coils tight around her waist. Constance sobs and flails, off-balance and dumb with shock at the heavy insistent weight of him on top of her.

‘You are my _wife_ and you will obey me, Constance,’ he hisses.

 It’s his panic talking, she knows, she _knows_ , but it’s too much, he’s breathing on her face hoarse and deafening like a monster and she’s alone with him in the woods. In a panic of revulsion all she knows is to get away from him at any cost. She hurls a fistful of mud back over her shoulder at his eyes. He grunts in shock and she slams her head backwards and connects with what might be his chin. His arm loosens from her waist and she drops, spins, spots one of Aramis’ pistols discarded on the ground within reach and throws herself at it. She rolls and raises her arms and when the world comes back into focus Jacques is staring down at her in utter shock and she’s looking back at him along the barrel of the pistol.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she spits, and it doesn’t even sound like her voice. ‘ _Don’t_ –‘

He puts his hands up, looking tearful. ‘You wouldn’t,’ he mumbles, all that determined strength evaporated in an instant.

 ‘I don’t know,’ she says, very quiet and fragile. ‘I might.’

She can’t keep the barrel pointed at him while she heaves herself back to her feet but he’s shocked enough to stay back. Once upright she brandishes the gun at him again and he just stares and stares like this is a betrayal he could never have imagined.

She doesn’t dare turn her back on him again. Her limbs are still wracked with shock. But she can’t _walk_ and she needs to get to Aramis. There's a fallen branch nearby that seems straight and sturdy enough to make a sort of crutch, but she needs to do something about Jacques first, because if he follows her, if he tries to manhandle her again, she _will_ kill him.

‘Sit down,’ she orders him shakily, and he slides his back down the heavy tree trunk like his limbs are folding in on themselves. She could use strips of her cumbersome skirts to tie him up but there isn’t time, and all she can think of is to stagger close enough that he’s shaking and sobbing with the barrel against his forehead and then swing the stock solidly into his temple.

He slumps with a little offended breath and she’s properly alone in the woods at last. 

She stares at his unconscious form numbly for a moment. He’ll have a very obvious bump on the head, she thinks, and can’t bring herself to care. She clings to trees to limp over to the fallen branch. It’s a bit too short to really be an effective crutch, so she walks very uneven and off-balance and it makes her head swim, crutch gripped in one arm and pistol in the other. The lights ahead are steady and beckoning: there’s been no sound since the gunshot, unless she missed something in the panic of getting away from Jacques.

The road is wide here and there’s a steep slope up several yards from the tree line to the edge of it. The ditch at the roadside is blacker than the woods, shadowed from the lights on the road and the moonlight. The inn’s windows are letting only a pool of firelight out, and if the bandits are here they’re keeping themselves scarce.

But someone fired a pistol, and it wasn’t Aramis, because he left both his pistols behind when he went to scout the road: Constance is gripping one of them in a white knuckled hand, the other she left on the floor near Jacques. He could be anywhere here, hurt or unconscious or worse, and she can’t _see_. Her throat is dried up; she’s afraid to call out in case the bandits are still close and there’s scarcely breath in her for it anyway. She lowers herself awkwardly to crawl, still gripping the crutch because it’ll do for a weapon as well in a pinch. She tugs the hood of her mud-caked cloak up in the hope that its dark fabric will help keep her invisible in the shadow of the trees.

On her belly at the edge of the road she can make out the gate into the inn-yard, where the faint light glints off a musket barrel. They are covering the road, then. She scans the building: the shadows are deep enough that there could easily be more of them.

 She wonders how many hours until dawn. The trek through the woods felt like hours – felt like _days_ – but she hasn’t the faintest idea how long it actually was.

Even surrender would be pointless now. Jacques is unconscious in the woods and will not trouble himself to seek a ransom for the wife who attacked him with a pistol. And Aramis is missing in the dark. She has nothing to bargain for, and nothing to bargain _with_. Forty-six livres sit heavy against her thigh. Forty-six musket balls would be more use at this point.

She wriggles back on her elbows, retreating deeper into the shadows. She gets back as far as the outermost trees and props herself up with the bark solid at her back, shivering. She holds the crutch in one hand, knuckles in the loam, and the pistol in her lap with the other, and searches the inscrutable dark with wide eyes. Her breath seems very noisy, the only thing in the blank world. She turns her eyes to the sky, where the stars wink coldly back at her.

A day ago she lay in the dark and worried about how close she’d come to doing nothing. She could have left Jacques to his fate, could have given that gift to d’Artagnan without lifting a finger, because he loves her so fiercely and she would do far more than commit murder for him. D’Artagnan is a better man than Jacques, and he’s better than Constance, too, because it has never occurred to him that convention and propriety could be more important than love. Constance was brave enough to ride out here with a pistol, but she wasn’t brave enough to put her love for d’Artagnan before her duty to Jacques. Duty is mean and bitter, and Jacques doesn’t deserve Constance’s devotion. For d’Artagnan, duty is to the King and France and to his friends, and maybe he would put Constance even before all of those things, if she would let him.

Jacques would have been shot in the head and left in a ditch when nobody came to ransom him home. There are worse things. Constance almost shot him _herself_ , not even an hour ago. She would be home and safe, and d’Artagnan would be there for her. Guilt would have swallowed her whole, though, in the days afterwards, and maybe Jacques would never have stopped haunting her until their happiness began to feel as ugly as her current marriage.

Instead she caused this. Jacques is in the dark somewhere and will come round soon no doubt, she didn’t hit him that hard, and she fears him looming out of the shadows at her as much as, if not more than the bandits.

And Aramis. She shudders, breath catching in her chest. Aramis, who is d’Artagnan’s sworn brother but agreed to deceive him for her sake; Aramis, who has bled for Constance’s sake before and cheerfully followed her into battle again. Keep an eye on him, Porthos said. I’m sorry, she thinks. The dark. I lost him.

Weeping won’t _help_ , she tells herself sternly. She blinks furiously until the warm tingle behind her eyes subsides and she clenches her fists tighter in the dark.

It’s cold and she’s damp but it isn’t so cold she’s in danger of freezing to death now that spring is starting to take hold, and that is something to be thankful for. Her limbs feel heavy and clumsy and her ankle is a slow, horrible throb, but she isn’t seriously injured. The pistol is loaded, and she still has two more shots in her belt. The moonlight isn’t enough to make her visible from the road. Aramis could still be alive.

How many hours until dawn? She squints up to try and gauge the position of the moon in the sky, but the trees break up her view and her ideas about telling the time by such things are hazy.

They told Porthos it would be a day’s ride here and a day back, so they’re expected back at the Garrison tomorrow evening. If the musketeers set out after them at first light they’ll arrive in the late afternoon, a day and a night from now. Far too late. When the dawn comes, Constance’s hiding place will not be good enough.

The night is not silent, but she’s learning not to flinch at every rustle of the wind in the trees. A twig snaps now though, and the wind does not _snap_.

 She pulls back the hammer of the pistol and she feels coldly murderous.

 ‘Stop there. I’ll kill you,’ she croaks, her voice absolutely steady.

A soft intake of breath.

‘Don’t move,’ she warns. 

‘Constance.’ Her name is blurred into a rushed exhalation, and she lowers the pistol, her stomach tensing with gratitude so sudden and absolute that she might choke on it.

‘Oh God,’ she chokes, scrambling forward onto her hands. ‘I can’t – where are you?’

Something scrabbles against the ground as if Aramis too is crawling, and then she can see the shadows shifting and at last a hand grasps her arm. Her arms lose all their strength and she collapses ungracefully onto her backside again. She can barely make him out, but she can hear him breathing, and without thinking she clenches both fists around handfuls of his doublet.

She shakes him gently. ‘Where have you _been_?’ she whispers, harsher than she means it because everything is so raw just now.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmurs. ‘Are you alright? Are you hurt?’ He reaches for her face, finds it with one hand, and she can just about make out the shape of his shoulder and his head against the undergrowth.

‘No,’ she says without thinking, and she feels some of the tension go out of him. He releases her face, letting his hand drop, but she doesn’t let go of his doublet. She might not let go of him for _days_ , she thinks, because whatever else happens, she’s not on her own any more.


	6. the dawn

They must make an odd picture if anyone could see them, sitting in the ditch with Constance gripping Aramis hard by the doublet. He shifts slightly under her hands, breathing raggedly.

‘Where’s your husband?’ he asks in a raw whisper.

She shudders involuntarily. ‘He’s unconscious. I hit him. He’s back there.’ Gesturing, with a hand neither of them can clearly see.

 ‘You hit – did he hurt you? Constance –‘

She can’t stop herself shaking. She can feel the protective rage building in him – it makes her think of d’Artagnan; God, d’Artagnan would kill Jacques for her in a heartbeat just for having frightened her like that –and she wants to reassure him but she can’t make her hands steady.

‘He didn’t mean – it was – he was trying to stop me and he –‘ Her throat closes up when she remembers him pinning her, the weight of his body and the heat of his breath.

Aramis gets an arm around her shoulders and she buries her face against his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady against her forehead. ‘He didn’t hurt me,’ she manages to whisper. ‘He frightened me, and I attacked him.’

 Aramis mutters a word she doesn’t recognise, but from the dark tone she thinks it is directed at Jacques.

 ‘You’re alright,’ he croons to the top of her head. ‘I won’t kill him unless you ask me to, but say the word, Constance…’

 ‘We’ll have had a wasted journey, if you kill him,’ she points out, her voice cracking. ‘No. He didn’t mean to hurt me.’ Aramis hums a little doubtfully at that, but says nothing.

She relaxes her fingers just slightly on his coat without letting go and leans back a little, trying to show that she’s really alright, her panic is fading to a manageable level now and pain matters less now that she’s not on her own. Then she remembers the gunshot and she jolts upright.

‘I heard a pistol. What happened to you?’ 

He sighs very softly and she wishes she could see his face because it’s hard to tell in the dark whether he’s about to lie to her.

‘I was stupid; they saw me and managed to get a shot off.’ She glares at him, despite the fact that presumably he can’t see any better than she can. His voice is steady, and he made his way over to her well enough – he can’t be, _can’t_ be badly hurt. She tugs lightly on his collar to demand a further explanation. ‘I lost my balance and I must have hit my head. Lost some time, but they either assumed I was dead, or they didn’t like the odds of coming over to check.’

Her stomach twists a bit at that. He _was_ unconscious in the dark, then; she could have crawled right past him. ‘Is your head alright?’

 ‘Fine,’ he says, and she can hear the indulgent smile in his voice. She mutters something uncharitable about knocking sense into him under her breath, and hears him huff a quiet laugh.

‘The shot, though,’ she insists, shuffling closer. ‘Where are you hurt?’ She shifts her hands on his chest. His doublet is damp, but like her he’s been lying in the mud, so dampness doesn’t necessarily mean blood.

‘Arm,’ he says, swaying a little away from her.

‘ _Where_?’ She slides her hands up to his shoulders and across and feels him flinch.

‘It’s not deep. I couldn’t bind it with one hand, but the bleeding has almost stopped.’

‘ _Almost_? That’s not reassuring!’

Trying to be gentle, she feels her way down the arm that isn’t draped across her shoulder and she feels him shudder when she reaches a damp, frayed patch of doublet. She flattens her other hand on his chest and feels the hitch as he flinches.

‘I could bind it for you?’ she offers, uncertain.

He hums doubtfully. ‘Best not perhaps. I’ve nothing to use that isn’t covered in mud, and infection is more to be feared than blood loss with this sort of wound.’

Constance nods slowly, seeing the wisdom of that. She is starting to breathe again, because he really does seem to be in one piece as far as she can tell in the dark, and even if they have one useless arm and one useless leg between them it’s a lot better than Constance on her own with her crutch and her paralysing guilt.

For a long time she sits and just listens to his presence. Relief makes her feel drunk, warmed and dizzy like she’s been at Athos’ wine. But it is too early for relief, really, so she sternly schools herself back to sobriety.

‘They’re surrounding the inn,’ Aramis mutters. ‘Covering the road, too.’

Constance nods. ‘So we’re stuck?’

He shifts uncomfortably in the dark. ‘I am sorry about this, Constance. I should not have underestimated these men.’

She would thump him for being a moron, but it doesn’t seem fair if he’s injured. She scoffs instead, raising both eyebrows though she doubts he can see her face clearly enough to tell. ‘This is hardly your fault.’

 ‘Hmm.’ He’s silent for a moment, thinking. After a while he makes a decisive noise in his throat, and says, ‘We’ll have to employ some dishonourable tactics, I think.’

‘Well, they started it,’ Constance says philosophically.

 ‘That was my pistol you were menacing me with before?’

‘Yes. The other one’s with Jacques. What are you thinking?’

The trees are just slightly more clearly defined against the sky than they were. The darkness is thinning, its treacly consistency softening. Being able to see again will be welcome, even if it makes their hiding place untenable.

‘We need to draw them out.’ Aramis murmurs. ‘We need to know how many we’re still dealing with.’

Constance feels a creeping dread when she realises the suggestion that’s coming, and is determined not to quail nonetheless. She cuts in. ‘So we surrender. That’ll draw them out. They haven’t much to fear, if…’

 She swallows, and he finishes for her: ‘If they believe they killed me. They’re ruthless, but too greedy to be cautious if they think there’s any chance of that extortionate ransom.’

She thinks about it. If the bandits are drawn out and there are too many of them, Aramis will be overwhelmed. And they might not kill her, as valuable as they believe her to be, but she will be at their mercy, and on her own again. She shudders with horror at the thought, her stomach cramping with the memory of being alone in the dark. But they’re stuck here: if they put their heads over the bank they’ll be shot, there’s no shelter in miles but that inn and Constance _can’t walk_. She feels sick and cold. She swallows carefully, and all she says is, ‘it’s risky.’

‘Do you trust me?’ he whispers. 

She can imagine the cautious intensity of the way he’s looking at her, even if his face at the moment is just a pale blur in the murky dark. There are a great many reasons to say no: this is reckless and stupid, he’s careless with his own life to the point of lunacy, and neither of them know how many they’re still facing. But she does _trust_ him, regardless of all that. She is not by any means convinced that the plan will work. But she does trust him to try.

 First, they have to get all the pieces in place. Braver with Aramis at her side – and literally leaning on him, crutch in the other arm – she leads the way back into the trees. Out of the deep shadow of the ditch, she can make out shapes, dull silhouettes still in the gloom. The dawn is only a faint promise as yet.

Jacques is not where she left him. Her stomach jolts, half-expecting him to leap at her from behind, and then she hears a quiet whimper.

 She takes a steadying, careful breath. ‘Jacques? Is that you?’

A little stifled noise. ‘I’m armed,’ he wheezes. His voice issues from a shadow crouched behind a tree.

‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ she sighs. Aramis shifts beside her; tense with anger or amusement, it’s hard to tell.

Jacques' voice is tense and shaky, and he’s still talking to her from a hunched posture behind a tree. ‘You’re mad,’ he croaks. ‘You attacked me. I’ll have you arrested.’

She almost wants to laugh. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says instead, as if they’re at home and he’s telling her conspiracy theories about his customers. ‘We’re going to get out of this and go home,’ she tells him steadily, ‘but we need your help first.’

He shuffles just slightly out of the cover of the tree. She can see the shape of him quite clearly now, and he must be able to see them, too.

Aramis raises the pistol and pulls back the hammer almost casually. ‘We’re not _asking_ for your help,’ he clarifies, and she can hear the wolfish grin in his voice.

 It takes cajoling and threats and hurried, furious reasoning, but he agrees when it’s clear that he really has no choice. Aramis assures him in that very steady, very sincere tone that if he does anything to disrupt the plan he will be shot in the balls before he can _think_ , and as Jacques chokes in horror Aramis turns swiftly to Constance and apologises for the indelicacy and she has to smother a grin.

The sky is a deep blue and the shadows sharp with pre-dawn glow when they arrive back to the edge of the road. Aramis is on his belly in the undergrowth nearby; she knows exactly where even if she can’t see him. Constance stands by Jacques breathing steadily, and a swathe of her petticoat is tied to a stick held in his hand.

The first light of dawn cracks open like a wound, quite sudden, just a gleam at first. She gives Jacques a shove, and he raises the white flag, staggering to the edge of the road.

‘Don’t shoot!’ he shrieks, deafening in the stillness. ‘Don’t shoot! I surrender. I’ll give you my wife.’

Constance limps after him, one hand raised in surrender, though the other is still gripping the crutch.

‘You’ve given us a lot of trouble!’ yells a voice from the gate. ‘I say we shoot him!’

 ‘No!’ Jacques says, stretching his hands higher above his head. ‘It was that musketeer! It was not my doing, Monsieur, I beg you…’

 ‘Where’s the musketeer?’

 ‘Dead.’

‘Prove it.’

She can see that Jacques is about to look right at Aramis’ hiding place and she could kill him; she settles for stumbling heavily into his back.

‘His- his body. It’s in the ditch. See for yourself.’

Constance can make out movement: the shadows are only grey now, and the man by the gate has shifted, poised. Come on, she thinks grimly. Come out and get me.

‘Two thousand livres,’ he calls.

 Jacques gapes: negotiation is his forte after all, and that is quite the price increase. ‘One thousand was the agreement.’

‘Eight of my men are dead! Two thousand, or I shoot you both.’

Apparently remembering that he isn’t haggling over a ream of cloth, Jacques shakes his head a bit. ‘You’ll have it. I will speak to the Queen immediately.’

Constance waits, wondering idly whether the Queen would actually pay her ransom, if it came to it. The sum is ridiculous, outrageous. The Queen is a compassionate woman, and Constance has found her surprisingly good company, in the few meetings they’ve had for dress fittings. She flatters herself that they’d be friends, if things were different. But then, she thinks, the Queen is a woman and in some ways no more free than Constance herself. She might wish to pay, but the King and the Cardinal would never agree.

 The man in the gateway is moving, and then her stomach seizes in horror. There are travellers on the road.

It is a public road, and even this early in the morning the local people must use it to get to and from their fields and to travel between towns. This is about to become a shootout, and three riders swathed in rough cloaks like farmers are about to be right in the middle of it.

She can’t warn Aramis without giving away his location. She doubts that the bandits will care if innocent bystanders get caught up in their crossfire. After all, as far as they’re concerned, this is a surrender.

The bandit by the gate is out in the open now, musket trained on Jacques. Another man has a pistol on Constance, and he waves two more men out of the shadows, directing them over to find Aramis’ body. Four is manageable, Constance thinks, and then she sees three more stride into place behind the leader.

Seven bandits. Three civilians. Aramis has two pistols and his sword and dagger. Constance has a heavy stick that she’s not _completely_ sure she can swing without falling over. 

It is then that she notices the glint of a spur on one of the farmers’ boots, and dawn pools across the sky like a promise fulfilled.


	7. fallout

She doesn’t look back at the cloaked men on the road. Doesn’t need to, and tries to keep the blossoming warmth in her chest from showing on her face. She stares straight at the bandit past Jacques’ shoulder, eyes carefully clear of the riders still approaching steadily. Her heart thumps hard, painfully in her chest. They wait. The seconds stretch, and the pistol pointed at her face doesn’t waver when the leader glances over to his men and yells, ‘You found the body?’

 Jacques is shaking like a leaf, the breath rattling in him too hard to speak. She feels him flinch in anticipation.

 ‘He’s not here!’ calls the voice from the ditch, and then roars in pain or fury when the pistol discharges.

 ‘Lying _dog_ …’ starts the leader, and aims at Jacques, who staggers back raising his arms, and the second pistol bellows across the clearing and the leader goes down.

 Constance throws an arm over her head instinctively. A cacophony of hooves surrounds her, and more gunfire, and she’s completely exposed here in the middle of the road. She stares around wildly. Someone grabs her by the arm – Jacques was nearest, but he has curled into a ball on the ground by now, this is not him. She jams her elbow backward, tries to stamp on her captor's foot but loses her balance on the bad ankle and lurches sideways against his body. He’s tugging at her, swearing in her face; she rakes his cheek with her fingernails – the crutch is dropped, useless.

 ‘Constance, _duck!_ ’

 She does, and the grip on her arm slackens suddenly in time with a deafening shot so close she feels her hair flutter. On her knees, she turns and it’s d’Artagnan _shining_ in the dawn like a knight from a tale, looking down at her half-frantic. He reaches downwards but she’s almost dead weight, can’t lift herself enough to mount the horse behind him so she just mutely shakes her head and he swoops down beside her, wraps an arm around her waist and half-pulls, half-carries her to the cover of the innyard wall.

‘You’re here,’ she gasps, ‘you’re here, you…’

 ‘My _God_ , Constance,’ he says in apparent exasperation, gripping both her arms tight and searching her face intently. She glances past him where battle is still raging: Porthos still mounted aiming a pistol at a man trying to flank Athos as he’s fencing. Another man snatches for Porthos’ reins and gets a cosh to the head for his trouble but the horse is spooked and rears and Porthos jumps before he can fall.

 D’Artagnan squeezes her arms and says ‘I’ll be back,’ and nods earnestly at her before he sprints off to help, drawing his sword on the move.

 Her head rings, and the light feels too bright and too harsh all of a sudden. Jacques, still curled close to the ground, has crawled away from the fight, mud coating his doublet and tears tracked into the dirt on his face; blood at one temple which is Constance’s own work, not the bandits at all.

 It’s over quickly. The musketeers stand panting, glaring warily at the unconscious or dead bodies of their foes, and d’Artagnan turns very fast to check Constance is where he left her; she smiles faintly at him but her eyes are still tracking the edges of the road. The two who went to look for Aramis’ body are not returned, and nor, indeed –

 Porthos turns to face her with a question already forming in his eyes, and guilt wraps around her belly and _tightens_ , but then one of the missing bandits is lurching out of the trees behind him, sword raised. Her mouth is open to shriek, but she doesn’t have breath for it – Porthos looks a little surprised at her horrified expression; she can’t even gesture –

 There’s a _thunk_ , soft but distinct, and the last attacker folds to the floor. Porthos spins, startled, and as one everyone in the clearing looks from the body on the floor, _main gauche_ between his shoulder blades, to Aramis, muddy and dishevelled at the edge of the road, arm still raised from the throw.

 Nobody can speak for a moment. Then Porthos puffs out air through his cheeks and Aramis raises his eyebrows and shrugs. Seconds later he tilts on his feet and the distance between them closes fast. Constance isn’t sure if it’s a hug or if Aramis needs holding up, because he looks awful – they all must look awful, she thinks, sleepless and covered in mud, and there’s blood, a _lot_ of it, all down one of Aramis’ arms. 

 Porthos lets go of him and Aramis catches her eye and winks. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, glancing around, good arm still propped on Porthos’ shoulder, ‘I applaud your timing.’

 She could kill him, she thinks, good God, as if this was _funny_ , but in the next second she finds a laugh bubbling out of her unbidden. It _isn’t_ funny, and yet hysteria has her by the throat, relief crashing over her in a big intoxicating wave.

 

Later, when the innkeeper’s wife has lent her a clean dress and they’re sitting in the empty taproom, she learns how they were saved. The size and audacity of this gang had not gone unnoticed by the garrison, and Tréville had been on the point of sending a deployment to deal with them anyway, before the King’s hunting plans had forced a delay. After Constance and Aramis’ departure, Porthos had explained their absence to Athos, who had been obliged to make Aramis’ excuses to the captain, and had learned that the bandits plaguing this area were likely to be too many for the two of them to face unaided. They give Aramis exasperated looks, as if he should have known this, but she can see worry and relief on them all and he just smiles back as if he can read them, too.

 ‘We rode all night,’ d’Artagnan says, slightly anxious as if he’s apologising for not arriving sooner.

 Aramis has been herded into a chair by the fire, where Athos is grimly rinsing a set of what look like torture implements in the hostess’ strongest neat spirits. Aramis looks unconcerned by this activity, and has been fielding most of his friends’ chastisements with weary smiles and wildly untrue assurances that he and Constance could have taken the lot of them, really, there had been no need for their assistance. She thinks they’re only letting him get away with it out of deference to her.

 Jacques has taken to his bed with poor grace, so there was no stopping d’Artagnan from sitting at her feet, where he is wrapping her ankle with tender hands. His touch is grounding, and she hasn’t the energy to even think about the impropriety of it, with her husband in the building and three other men in the room, no less. He seems reluctant to stop touching her, and when he can’t reasonably fuss over the bandage any more he sits at her feet with an arm wrapped around her leg and she finds herself absently stroking the hair at the back of his neck. Somehow, this feels unreal, safety in the aftermath of last night’s terror.

 Athos finishes whatever he is doing with the alcohol and the metal instruments and Aramis wincingly bares his arm, lifting the square of linen he has been holding to it. Constance stares.

‘You said it was _fine_ ,’ she splutters, taking this personally for some reason. Porthos gives her a sympathetic look.

‘He always says that. He’s an idiot.’

 It’s a nasty bloody furrow across the outside of his bicep, and Aramis winces when Athos puts the needle to it through the careless smile he’s trying to direct at Constance. She tears her eyes away from his bloody arm with some difficulty, and catches Porthos’ eye instead. ‘I wasn’t very good at keeping an eye on him,’ she says seriously, and he grins and shrugs.

 ‘Pretty good effort, I’d say,’ he says gruffly.

 ‘Keeping an eye on Aramis is a job for an army,’ Athos grumbles without looking up, and Aramis grins down at the top of his bent head.

 Constance tilts her head back, feeling her eyelids wooden with exhaustion. ‘Thank you,’ she sighs at the ceiling. ‘All of you. I know this wasn’t – you didn’t have to do this.’ She picks her head up to look at them: Aramis first, then the other two and finally, with some effort, d’Artagnan. ‘I didn’t want you to have to be in danger for my husband’s sake.’

Athos shrugs. ‘Bandits on the roads are our problem anyway, Constance. And don’t mention it.’ He puts the needle down and trims the thread with a knife. ‘Not a word about uneven stitches,’ he mutters warningly at Aramis, who gives his own bicep an appraising look and smiles but stays quiet.

 D’Artagnan shifts a little at her feet. She can feel his sadness, but he says, very softly to her knee, ‘For your sake, Constance. Always. Anything.’

 She strokes his hair and feels love sear her like a brand.

 ‘Have you thought about what you’ll do now?’ Aramis asks quietly, a faint frown creasing his eyebrows. She glances up at him in surprise.

 ‘What… what do you mean?’

 He hesitates, fingers fiddling with the pistol on the table next to him. ‘You’re not going home with him,’ he says at last, very quiet and firm, frowning at his own hand. D’Artagnan goes rigid against her leg. Porthos and Athos just look confused.

 Constance feels tears heating behind her eyes and frowns hard to quell them, inhaling sharply through her nose. She isn’t quite sure whether she’s upset or angry, but she stifles both and tries to keep her voice gentle. ‘Aramis, he didn’t mean to…’

 D’Artagnan’s grip tightens on her knee. ‘What did he do?’ he grates out, low and dangerous.

 Aramis glances anxiously between them, lips parted but not speaking.

 ‘Did he hurt you?’ D’Artagnan presses. ‘Did he hurt her?’ he repeats, spinning to glare at Aramis.

 ‘No,’ Constance says. ‘ _No._ ’

 ‘I’ll kill him,’ says d’Artagnan as if she hasn’t spoken, and Athos grunts warningly. ‘I’m serious, Constance, if he hurt you, if he ever hurt you…’

Ignoring him, Athos looks at Aramis and mutters, ‘what is this?’

 Aramis shrugs awkwardly and looks at Constance again. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he says edgily. ‘I didn’t see what happened, but Constance was upset.’

 ‘Nothing happened,’ Constance snaps, feeling the flush rise on her cheeks.

 ‘ _Constance_ ,’ d’Artagnan presses, rising to a crouch facing her.

 Athos has gone quiet and is looking into the fire, determinedly not interfering. Porthos looks upset, eyebrows knitted and eyes stormy under them, but not like he’s about to speak. Aramis looks a bit shamefaced as if he knows he shouldn’t have brought it up, but there’s an obstinate set to his jaw. D’Artagnan squeezes her hand and shakes it lightly and she looks back to him, though the intense anger and love in his eyes almost hurts to look at.

 ‘Constance I swear if he hurt you he won’t get near you…’

 She presses her lips together; she’d like to get away but he’s trapping her and she still can’t get up without help. When she doesn’t speak he glances back at Aramis for support, who winces apologetically and says, ‘I don’t like the thought of you living with a man who tried to sell you to bandits. And there must be a reason you decided to knock him unconscious.’

 ‘I can handle him,’ she growls, glaring between the two of them now they’ve decided to gang up on her.

 ‘You can stay at the Garrison,’ says d’Artagnan. ‘Or we could ask…’

 ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she snaps, jerking her hand out of his grasp.

 Aramis, trying to be gentle, says ‘Constance, we will not allow you to…’

 ‘You won’t _allow_ me?’ she hisses. ‘You’re not really my brother, Aramis, and d’Artagnan _you_ are not really my –‘

 She stops because she doesn’t know what the next word ought to be, and d’Artagnan recoils, looking wounded. ‘I know,’ he says quietly. ‘You’ve made that very clear.’

 She shivers, suddenly cold, and regrets that he’s stopped touching her. She can’t think what to say, and doesn’t know if she _wants_ to say something conciliatory or to reprimand them further.

 ‘Enough,’ says Athos softly. ‘It is for Constance to decide whether she stays with her husband. Constance, whatever you decide, you know we will help, in any way we can.’

 She meets his steady gaze and nods carefully. She’s still avoiding d’Artagnan’s eyes.

 ‘In the meantime,’ Athos continues, ‘at least two of us need to sleep. We leave for Paris in the morning.’

 He stands and waits for Aramis to imitate him in case the other musketeer is unsteady on his feet. When Aramis waves him off, Athos crosses to Constance and offers her his arm, and as he helps her to the stairs she is acutely conscious of d’Artagnan’s wounded eyes on her back.

 

She’s exhausted enough that sleep wipes her out completely and she doesn’t so much as dream, a mercy. In the morning, though, she wakes achy and jittery with the hangover of the argument as well as everything else that happened. It’s Porthos who comes to knock on her door and tell her they’re ready to go.

 Gently he supports her down the stairs and he doesn’t say much; she’s distracted by worrying about having to deal with d’Artagnan _and_ Jacques at the same time.

 Jacques is in the taproom staring gloomily into a tankard, and he looks up at her pitiful and pale, looking not much recovered despite having slept almost a whole day and night. She gives him a faint smile because she does feel sorry for him, despite everything.

 ‘Oi,’ says Porthos. ‘Finish that. We’re leaving soon.’ Jacques flinches and fumbles with the tankard and then hurries out of the room.

 It occurs to her suddenly that her horse is dead and Aramis’ stolen, so they have only the three horses the others arrived on to take all six of them back to Paris. It’s trivial and she knows it, but she feels almost panicked at the thought of sharing a mount with Jacques – which would be the only appropriate thing – or with d’Artagnan, which would be the logical thing, since he’s a better horseman and almost certainly the lightest of the musketeers.

 Porthos finds her some bread and watered-down wine and sits with her while she eats, a steadying presence that settles her nerves a bit.

 ‘Um,’ she swallows, ‘is Aramis alright?’ She still feels guilty about the state of his arm.

 Porthos offers her a crooked grin. ‘He’ll be fine. If I have to bloody _sit_ on him to make him stay out of trouble for three days at a time…’

 She smiles, though really the trouble wasn’t Aramis’ fault, this time at least. ‘I wouldn’t have lasted very long without him,’ she admits in a small voice, looking at the battered grain of the table. She can feel Porthos watching her cautiously. He doesn't often let on, but not much gets past Porthos, and as tired and wrung out as she is, she knows she’s not hiding her emotions very well.

 ‘’Bout three years ago,’ he says suddenly, ‘there was an ambush on a carriage we were escorting, up North somewhere, Normandy.’

 She looks up at him and he meets her eyes steadily, offers no explanation, goes on with the story.

 ‘Some bastard put a musket ball in my horse’s leg. Good horse, that. Shame. And I had three guys on me, cut off between the carriage and the ditch, and the others were busy protecting the royals. Thought I’d had it,’ he says seriously, and she nods because now she really does know what that feels like.

 ‘Aramis got on the roof of the carriage and just chucked himself right into the middle of it. 'Cause he's an idiot. He saved my life, but… Well. There’s a scar on his ribs, you might’ve seen it.’ Constance doesn’t remember, she’s only seen him without his shirt on the once and she was distracted by a more recent injury at the time, but the image of Aramis throwing himself bodily into a fight is all too easy to imagine.

 ‘It was a hell of a wound. He’s lucky to be alive, and I could’ve killed him _myself_ for being such a reckless bastard.’

 She catches his eye at that and they share a rueful smile. ‘I know what you mean,’ she says.

 Porthos wrinkles his nose at the memory. ‘I remember thinking I’d die of guilt if he didn’t pull through; him lying there like a corpse.’ He blinks, quite hard, and shakes himself a bit. ‘What I’m saying is… Constance, he cares about you, and he just _does_ shit like that for people he cares for. You can’t feel guilty over that.’

 He stands, and she takes his arm to haul herself up too. ‘Anyway, he’s fine. Luck of the bloody devil.’ He looks at her again, serious and apologetic. ‘Don’t think I can help you with… d’Artagnan, and your husband. But you don’t need to worry about Aramis, at least.’

 She smiles sadly, but she does feel a bit better. She gulps the last of the wine and takes his arm again to start the long journey home.

 


	8. blessings

In the yard, the sun is watery but reasonably warm. Athos and Aramis are there adjusting the saddlebags of three horses and eating their own breakfast at the same time, and Jacques, having been shooed out of the taproom, is slouched on a bench outside the stable squinting unhappily. When she and Porthos emerge they all look up: Jacques quickly looks away again, Athos nods courteously and salutes her with the apple he’s eating. Aramis grins brightly, just a faint hesitation in his eyes.

 ‘Constance! Did you rest well?’

‘Well enough. Is your arm…?’

‘Good as new,’ he says, and Athos scoffs at him. ‘Athos’ stitches are unsightly, but they hold well enough.’

Athos throws his apple core at Aramis’ head and he dodges cheerfully.

 She’s about to give in and ask where d’Artagnan is when he emerges from the stables leading two horses. ‘We’ll still be one short,’ he says casually to the others, ‘but the only other horse in there is lame –‘ He halts stiffly when he sees Constance, and after a second’s hesitation gives her a tense smile and adds, ‘Good morning.’

 ‘Good morning,’ she says, determined not to be the first one to bring up last night’s dispute. ‘Are we stealing horses now?’ she asks, frowning.

 ‘Stealing from _bandits_ ,’ d’Artagnan specifies, grinning. ‘They can hardly complain.’

 The surviving bandits were delivered to the local constabulary the previous afternoon, and pretty soon they’ll never have use for horses again.

 ‘So. Do we draw lots, for who has to share?’ Constance asks, feeling she may as well bite the bullet.

 They trade surprised looks and she ignores them pointedly. D’Artagnan is busying himself with the tack, probably to avoid looking at her, but even if she weren’t still angry with him, she can’t very well ride back to Paris in the arms of her lover with her husband right there at her side. The other three are exchanging looks like they’re having a silent conversation, and they are neither as subtle nor as tactful as they appear to believe.

 Aramis approaches her with his eyes wide and entreating and says ‘Can I prevail upon you to help me with the reins, Constance? My arm is giving me some trouble.’

 She raises her eyebrows at him because she’s just seen him toss a saddlebag to Athos with that very arm, but at the same time she’s grateful for what he’s doing. She nods, cutting her eyes to Jacques, who is scowling at them as though he suspects Constance of inviting all four musketeers into her bed.

 ‘You have no objection, Monsieur,’ Aramis says to him over his shoulder, not really bothering to make it a question, and that’s settled.

 

The ride is long and uncomfortable. D’Artagnan takes the lead very carefully _not_ sulking, and Jacques dawdles at the back with Athos impatiently chivvying him along. Porthos rides beside them and neither he nor Aramis try to coax her into conversation but they keep up a stream of chatter that’s enough distraction to keep her from staring gloomily at d’Artagnan’s offended shoulders all the way back to Paris.

 Constance doesn’t know what to say to him. The harsh truth of it is, nothing has changed, and he knows that as well as she does. D’Artagnan’s sword can’t protect her from being left destitute if she leaves her husband and loses all the safety that respectability can provide her with. And despite everything that happened that night in the woods – the sick panic will never leave her, she thinks, she’ll always remember how utterly helpless she felt in its grip – she still doesn’t believe Jacques would ever deliberately hurt her.

 And yet. She feels so hopeless, when she looks at the future and all it has in it is being trapped in Jacques’ house, obliged to cook and clean for him, beholden to him for her keep and any small freedoms he chooses to grant her, obliged to share his _bed_ …

 She hears him whine something at Athos behind them and twists to peer over Aramis’ shoulder. The sight of him prompts something like revulsion – part of it is pity, because he really has had a horrible time these last few days. But the bigger part is something ugly, because there he still is standing between Constance and everything she wants.

 Paris looms closer and Constance feels herself shrinking back against Aramis, because arriving in Paris will mean going home with Jacques and having to watch d’Artagnan’s betrayed eyes as he walks away and leaves her there. Aramis doesn’t comment, but he does grip her steadily around the waist and that in itself is some reassurance.

 Outside their house, Jacques dismounts and stands very straight with his lips tight and his eyes on the ground. As if the words pain him, he grates out, ‘I thank you gentlemen. For your assistance.’ He shoots a very quick glance up at Aramis, who shrugs carelessly, and then his gaze skates over Porthos and Athos, he nods abruptly and hurries indoors without another word.

 The musketeers look at one another in surprise. ‘Well,’ says Aramis. ‘That’s something.’

 D’Artagnan dismounts and comes over to help her down, because he is, always, the better man and he loves her enough to be gallant even when he’s upset with her. She can’t meet his eyes, but she allows herself to lean into his touch as he guides her to the door. She leans against the door post and looks up at the others.

 ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ she says wretchedly.

 ‘Don’t,’ Porthos tells her, grinning, and Athos at the same time says ‘There’s no need.’

 They leave, needing to report to Tréville, and d’Artagnan lingers only long enough to give her a searching look which she tries to meet with a smile. She watches them turn the corner and her heart aches, but she won’t cry. Nothing has changed, and she is much luckier than she might have been.

 

In the kitchen, Jacques is slumped at the table, and he doesn’t look up for some time. She drops heavily into a chair, and silence settles around them like dust.

 ‘I don’t want you here,’ he croaks at last, still staring at the table.

 She blinks at him. ‘What?’

 He shivers and doesn’t look at her.

 ‘Jacques… what do you mean?’

 He breathes in harshly through his nose. ‘I don’t want you here. I… I’m sorry. I won’t throw you out. But I… Constance, please. I can’t have you in my house.’

 She’s dizzy with shock. ‘I don’t understand. Is this about d’Artagnan…?’

 ‘No.’ He swallows. ‘You’re not the sort of woman I thought you were. You’re… I loved you. You were so pretty and delicate. But really you’re…’ He trails off, and she doesn’t know what to say. She’s irrationally wounded by the implication that she has been deceiving him.

 ‘I don’t like violence, Constance,’ he says hoarsely, like it’s hard for him to admit. ‘You’re dangerous to be near. I won’t disgrace you, or leave you destitute. But you have to stay away from me.’

 She blinks at the floor. It needs sweeping, she thinks blankly.

 ‘Are you saying that you’re afraid of me?’ she says at last, incredulous.

 He harrumphs and burrows his face into his arms.

 ‘What do you suggest?’ she asks him.

 ‘I don’t care. Join a convent. Find a position in a noble household. Join the damned musketeers, I’m sure they’d be glad to have you,’ he adds, bitterness colouring his tone, and then suddenly he does look contrite. ‘I am grateful,’ he croaks, scarcely audible. ‘But _that_ … that can never happen again.’

 She knows he is referring to the terror of fire fights and the deadly night in the woods, and she’s almost sympathetic, but then again…

 ‘It was not _my_ fault that you were kidnapped,’ she says sharply.

 He grunts doubtfully and says nothing.

 ‘And I didn’t have to come after you,’ she adds, and knows she should stop talking, her voice is cracking, but it’s like the dam has broken. ‘You think I _wanted_ to? I had to ask Aramis to come and help me rescue you, and he could have been killed, any of them could have been killed and all because of you! You… and you… You think I liked it, you think that _I…_ ’

 ‘You do like it. I saw you. Firing pistols and running around. I’ve never seen you so… You shouldn’t have been a woman, Constance. You’re not… I can’t have a wife who is like that.’

 Constance clenches her fists, numb with the injustice of it. ‘Well, I _am_ your wife. And there is nothing _either of us_ can do about it!’ Her throat convulses then and she sobs helplessly.

 He doesn’t move to comfort her, or at all as far as she can tell through the tears. He just sits and stares at the table, and everything that’s happened in the last few days rises up around Constance as if to drown her.

 

She runs out of energy for crying after a while. Desolation sits heavy on her shoulders and the worst thing is that her legs are too shaky to stand and leave the room or do anything. Constance has never been one to sit and cry about anything, but this time she really doesn’t know anything else to do.

 Jacques clatters to his feet and she expects him to leave the room, but instead he clunks down a cup in front of her and pours a generous measure of brandy.

 She grips the cup in a pale hand and tips the whole lot down her throat in one smooth gulp. Jacques looks mildly shocked, and he’s still looking at her as if she’s an alien creature who has taken the place of his pretty, neat, obedient wife.

 ‘I won’t disgrace you,’ he says shortly, standing stiffly in front of her and looking at the wall over her head. ‘I will give you some time to find a position. I will support you as your husband, if you need money. But you can’t live here. It’s not safe to be near you, Constance.’

 She can’t think of anything at all to say, except, very faintly, ‘I saved your life.’

 He grimaces, still not looking at her. ‘Perhaps there will be a position in the palace. The Queen was so impressed with your dressmaking.’

 She reaches out to snatch his hand, so fast that he steps back as if she’s lashing out at him. ‘I don’t understand. I am your _wife_ ,’ she chokes, and she doesn’t know why she’s pressing the point since that very fact has so often been her worst enemy.

 He backs away and fiddles with his hands, across the room. ‘You don’t love me,’ he says, uncertainly.

 There is a kind of clarity in that, she thinks. For the first time, it occurs to her that perhaps this is what she wanted.

 She looks at him frankly. ‘No.’

 ‘You love one of those musketeers.’

 She almost laughs; he clearly thinks her so wayward that she may have had affairs with any _number_ of musketeers. Partly to shock him, and partly because she really _does_ , albeit not in the way he means, she says, ‘All of them.’

 The look on his face is very much worth it.

 

When he’s disappeared upstairs she takes a while longer to settle her nerves, and then hobbles over to the bucket of rainwater under the window to splash her face and obscure the blotchiness of tears. She takes the head off a mop to improvise a walking stick, throws her spare cloak on since the other is bundled in her saddlebags stiff with mud, and leaves.

 It’ll be night soon, but the Paris dusk is never _dark_ as such. Windows and torches make the damp cobbles gleam. The streets are still busy; people taking evening strolls, peddlers packing up their wares, young men in search of taverns, working girls on the prowl.

 Her progress is slow, but when she is within a few streets of the Garrison a young musketeer she doesn’t recognise her offers her his arm to help her along. She asks him if he knows the whereabouts of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d’Artagnan. He looks a little surprised that she’s looking for them, but tells her they left for the tavern after reporting to Tréville, and that he thinks they usually drink in the tavern in the next street, because it’s quiet and the Red Guards don’t go there, but that the establishment in question is no place for a lady. It’s somewhat gratifying that this young gallant thinks her so ladylike after Jacques has told her the opposite, but she smiles and says she’ll be fine, thank you, and lets him escort her to the door anyway. He looks most doubtful about letting her go in alone, but she’s firm and polite and he relents, because clearly any friend of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d’Artagnan is to be obeyed in all matters.

 It’s dingy inside but she almost immediately makes out Athos’ silhouette at the bar with his back to her. She can’t see the others and is about to step further into the throng when she hears a familiar voice from beside her, behind the wooden partition. The benches have high backs that ensure some privacy for their conversation, but Constance is close enough to hear quite clearly through the splintery wood and she freezes.

 ‘I love her. And I _know_ she loves me. Why can’t that be enough?’

 The words are slurred, and d’Artagnan is clearly in his cups already. It stops her in her tracks, because heaven knows _she_ has never been able to answer that question even if he’s never put it so bluntly to her.

 She can hear the weary sigh that greets the question, as if this isn’t the first asking.

 ‘She’s not so free as you are, d’Artagnan.’ Aramis, soft and conciliatory. ‘For a woman it’s harder to…’

 ‘She’s married to the weasel.’ Porthos interrupting, blunter. ‘She has to do her duty by him. She’s too kind for her own good.’

 Constance feels herself blush at that, both because of the praise and because she’s aware that she doesn’t deserve it, and even more acutely because she knows she shouldn’t be eavesdropping.

 ‘He hurt her,’ d’Artagnan mumbles obstinately, and the other two groan. It sounds like the conversation has been going in circles for some time.

 ‘She says he didn’t,’ Porthos says flatly.

 ‘Aramis won’t tell me what happened.’

 ‘I don’t _know_ –‘

 ‘You know something!’

 There’s a scuffle and a clunk and a sharp protest, and Porthos mutters ‘take that bottle off him,’ and she’s shrinking back towards the door when another voice says, ‘Constance?’

 Athos is staring at her as he returns to the table with a bottle in each hand.

 ‘At last,’ Porthos says, ‘d’Artagnan’s just knocked my drink over, give me that…’

 Athos passes it over, says ‘Gentlemen,’ and nods in Constance’s direction.

 He comes forward to take her hand and Aramis appears behind him, peering around the end of the bench. She feels acutely embarrassed, but, she thinks with some satisfaction, probably not as embarrassed as d’Artagnan.

 ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt.’

 ‘Not at all,’ says Athos quietly.

 Aramis grins wickedly at her and says, ‘Constance, we’ve missed you terribly these last two hours.’

 ‘Has something happened?’ Athos asks gently, still holding her elbow.

She nods awkwardly and screws up her courage to look past them to d’Artagnan, who is staring at her as though at a mirage, mouth gaping and eyes hazy.

 ‘My husband… wishes me to leave his house,’ she says haltingly, bravely holding his gaze. ‘We will remain married. But… we will live apart.’

 She sees Athos and Aramis exchanging glances over her head, but she watches d’Artagnan’s face – hesitating, then very slowly relaxing, forehead creased with a thousand questions, eyes bright with hope.

 ‘I’d better fetch another cup,’ Athos mutters.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading!


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